the online world of Mike Rodriquez

Networking Remains a Mystery

Further evidence I just don’t get networking. I replaced my home router* and my VPN connection to work stayed up even as I moved the cable from the old to the new router.

The DSL modem was not rebooted so I kept the same IP address with ATT, but I was surprised that the virtual connection didn’t drop when the cable was unplugged.

Not sure if that’s robust networking or a security hole, but it was surprising.

The new router gets an IP via “Auto” which I take to be plain DHCP instead of PPOE, so I didn’t need to enter my username or password. That makes it a lot easier for less technical customers to get going.

In fact, the only glitch was when my browser started inadvertently and I lost a lot of tabs to a router error page as the router setup wasn’t quite complete.

Oh, and on my first visit to the config page, it offered to, and did w/out incident, update the router firmware.